I need More Control of my System!

Helo folks.

The following is relevant to Windows XP professional, service pack 3

I have an annoying ideological problem. I find it a combination of annoying, disturbing, and scary, that a fullscreen app can so easily make a computer unuseable.

I quite often have problems with apps - usually games - crashing or freezing while they're taking up the full screen, and using all available cpu/memory, leaving no way to get rid of them beyond a power cycle.

What I really want, is more control. I want to prevent situations like this from occurring.

I know, of course, of the task manager. Ctrl+alt+del gives a nice administrative backdoor to terminate troublesome apps. However, the task manager has no shortage of shortcomings.

1. The worst situation of all, frequently a game is using so much of the system resources, that the task manager cannot start, or takes a long time to do so. Navigating it is similarly painful. Often there are symptoms like the mouse pointer still being able to move, and sound still playing, that indicate the system has some semblance of functionality, but that the current app is just blocking me

2. A frequent situation is where the task manager will start in the background successfully, but be unable to force focus onto itself. In these situations, I am often able to navigate it "blind", by typing in the first letter of the process I want to terminate, pressing tab twice(moves focus to End Process Button), then E(nd process), then Y(es). This is obviously sub optimal.

What I really want, is something like the task manager, but which works better. At a deeper level. Some program that can run in the background, reserving a bit of memory and cpu time for itself, and putting itself absolute first in process priority so it's always responsive and available when I need it. Also something that can forcibly draw over a fullscreen app, if possible.

Failing that, maybe even something entirely non visual. Like a hotkey combination that terminates all current fullscreen apps, or even all non-system apps.

I'm quite fond of the spare consoles in linux. Ubuntu at least, allows ALT+F2-7 to switch to one of several consoles which seem like they run outside of the operating system, and have always been responsive in my experience.

I'm not expecting this to be simple or easy, but I think it's really needed. I don't mind how deep I have to go into the guts of my OS to make it work. I've done basic registry editing, policy editing, etc before. I'd assume such an app would need to be installed as administrator and set to run on system startup through a group policy

I'm aware that it might be a good idea to fix whatever issues are causing these crashes in the first place, however that's a myriad of possible issues ranging from hardware on my side, to poorly coded apps. And can vary widely between installs. I'm really looking for a Final Solution of sorts here, as the knowledge of how to circumvent these problems would be more useful than any temporary fixes to an individual system.

 

Greetings, WarKirby.

You have obviously spent time thinking about this, and I commend you. It's refreshing to read posts that are not shot from the hip in desperation.

I'm not going to bore you with links to Task Manager replacements, such as Process Explorer.

The problems you present have, I think, plagued all of us at one time or another. I see no easy solution, save one:

Microsoft Windows 7.

 

I don't know a lot about windows 7. Can you tell more?

I'm rather reluctant to move to a new version, as XP has been known and stable for a long time now, and is pretty much the industry standard.

Is there any known way of backporting the necessary functionality?

 

A comparison:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare?T1=tab20
A more general overview:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/home

I remember when Windows 98 was that familiar friend. I'm running Win7 on a 6 year old PC and it performs as good as XP ever did, maybe better. It's a lot more stable than I remeber XP to be when it came out.

what functionality?

 

sometimes a simple tweak of start-up programs or unneeded services running in the background can have positive results,i would recommend this guide(i used the safe tweaks) http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm
and autoruns,right click the(logon-winlogon) entry and a search will direct you to sites that'll tell you if the entry is safe to uncheck or necessary to run http://www.majorgeeks.com/Autoruns_d4686.html
and cleanmem will help flush the memory after some full screen gaming http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=5993

 

Hi WarKirby,

You may want to...

1. Go to the display settings tab and change the colors from 32-bit to 16-bit.
2. While your there, go to the Theme tab and change the theme to Windows Classic.
3. Right click on the .exe or shortcut file that starts up the game/program and select the compatibility tab. Try running it in Win98/ME mode. There's other options there as well.
4. While in the game/program go to the video options and scale back on some of the features.
5. To regain access back to the desktop when in full screen, press and hold the left ctrl key on the keyboard and then press the Esc key on the top left.

Techsent

 

I'm not finding much info here. These pages seem more focused on advertising the OS for an average end user, and don't seem to mention much about administrative control.

Whatever functionality it is that makes windows 7 the solution to my OP. Still not sure what's magical aout it.

 

cleanmem looks potentially good. Maybe even suspiciously good.

The other two might help a bit, but probably not much. An example problematic game is dawn of war II. It takes up all the cpu it possibly can. Terminating background processes will just leave more for it to suck up.

 

o.0

I thought you were joking for a sec with these. What will they accomplish besides a marked decrease in video quality?

I'm guessing this will reduce memory usage?

hmm, will give that a try. I usually use alt+tab and it often fails, we'll see if that's any better.

 

One of the inherent XP problems is, after allocating memory resources (RAM) for programs, not releasing those resources when the program is terminated. In fact, if the programs are not well written, they can produce "memory leaks", into which XP will pour more and more RAM until the resources are exhausted. When that point is reached, the system must find more memory to tap (the "Page" or "Swap" files), which pretty much starts a vicious circle - extra seeking for the hard drive, extra CPU cycles dedicated to meaningless tasks, etc., which eventually leads to what we commonly refer to as a "crash".

Windows 7 takes a giant leap forward in RAM usage and allocation techniques. It is a very stable operating system in that it does not allow 3rd-party programs to confiscate system resources needlessly.

As far as XP being the industry standard - that may be true, I don't know. But, as time goes on, and software developers come up with new and better programs to take advantage of Win 7's architectural advances, I've got a feeling that XP will join the ranks of other operating systems that have become obsolete.

It is sad, in a way: I've always liked XP. I liked Windows 98 and Windows 95. I like dinosaurs, too.

 

What are your hardware specs? CPU, memory, graphics card?
Dawn of War II hardware requirements:
Minimum Requirements
* Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista SP1
* P4 3.2 GHz (single core) or any Dual Core processor
* 1 GB RAM (XP), 1.5 GB RAM (Vista)
* A 128MB Video Card (Shader Model 3) - Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT / ATI X1600, or equivalent
* 5.5 GB of Hard Drive space

Recommended
* Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista SP1
* AMD Athlon 64×2 4400+ or any Intel Core 2 Duo
* 2 GB RAM (XP and Vista)
* A 256MB Video Card (Shader Model 3) - Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT / ATI X1900, or equivalent
* 5.5 GB of Hard Drive space

There's no software fix for hardware that's not up to the task.

 

I know this is not what you really asked, but problems with full-screen apps (especially Flash Player based apps) can often be overcome by installing the latest available drivers for your graphics/video/display adapter.

 

I don't think this is my problem though. The previously mentioned example, Dawn of War II, will sometimes crash on the main menu or a loading screen before it's had a chance to do much of anything, and just after a system restart too. I don't think memory leaks over time are the cause.

There are plenty of other examples too though. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Fallout, New Vegas. Team Fortress 2, Heroes of Newerth, Supreme Commander, etc. Not that crashes are a perpetual and constant issue with these games, just that they happen occasionally, and over the six years I've had a computer I'm just gradually becoming sick of the lack of control, and of the ability for a program to take my pc away from me, even while the OS is clearly running fine in the background. It's an issue of principle at this point.

Coming from someone on this forum, that means a lot more to me than a million microsoft ads. I might give windows 7 a try in future. Though I'm a bit broke for now, and not up to the hassle of attempting to get a pirate copy.

It seems like it's outlasted windows vista, though. Seems like windows 7 had the fastest turnaround time I;ve ever seen for being released after a previous version. As far as I recall, the time between xp and vista was far longer than between vista and 7.

What about Windows 2000/ME ? :-D
Some dinosaurs are more worthy than others

I think XP has stood the test of time, personally.

More than sufficient
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512
Memory: 3072MB RAM

Hardware isn't an issue, though I wouldn't rule out drivers. Still, as previously mentioned, DOWII was just a random example, this is a matter of principle.

A good idea, I ought to see to that anyways.

 

Just checked my video drivers, seems I was already up to date. v260.99
So that's not going to help any of my problems